Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Three Reasons The Golden Lotus Ruined Dailies

Dailies have become a staple this expansion, something people needed to do at the start to get their foot up in the gearing department. Even if you raid you wanted to have those reputations up so you can buy that piece with valor that just would not drop for you in the raid. If you don't raid, that was the only way to get current level gear. So it made, for many, grinding dailies a requirement, not an option.

Add to the reputation thing the fact that people always feel they need to valor cap it pushed more people into doing dailies, even people that never really did them before. This means that they need to do the things they need to get valor, and those daily quests give valor now. At the lower rate of valor you receive from raiding, from dungeons and the pitifully low number you get from the new addition to the game known as scenarios, for many it made it feel like they needed to do dailies to help.

So someone like myself that likes to cap as soon as possible and is a damage dealer so I can not get quick queues for dungeons or raids means I have to mix and match in dailies to help get to that cap faster. It is nice to have the option but that means that I will be doing a lot more dailies than I might really want to do.

Don't get me wrong here, we are talking about someone that has over 10,000 dailies done on my main already, it is not like I have anything against doing them. I've always done them even when I did not need anything from them as that large total of dailies from only one character proves. So I am not against dailies, I think it is fantastic design and a great concept and glad they have added valor to them.

But the golden lotus are a completely different story. There is nothing fun about them outside of the roll club. While it might be true that they are the best to get valor from as there are so many of them, they are just so badly designed in a few ways as I see it. Anyone that had close to 10,000 dailies on one character before mists even came out should be considered an expert on dailies, so I will share my expert opinions on why the golden lotus dailies ruined the entire daily experience for many this expansion.

1) Reward

Golden Lotus quests are just as rewarding as all other dailies are in many aspects. Nineteen gold and some change, a few lesser charms and five valor, but their 100 reputation (more with bonuses like human or guild) per quest seems prohibitive.

For anyone that does the math they will see that the golden lotus are not that bad at all reputation wise even at 100 per quest. It would take a new player with no guild, not a human, and no other reputation bonuses less than a month of grinding them to get to exalted. So in reality that is not bad at all.

So why do I consider that 100 reputation to be one of the things that makes the golden lotus bad? Because it is all about appearance. You will do roughly 15 quests per day and at 100 per for most, you will end the quest day with 1500 reputation. Compare that to the anglers where you do three quests, all much easier, all much faster, and get 1500 reputation.

See, that is why there is a problem with reputation, it is the appearing that you are getting nothing for it even if you are. Everything is not so black and white when it comes to the game. The quests are fine, the rate of reputation gain is fine, there is really nothing fundamentally wrong with them, but that 100 just feels low for the average player.

That is where the Golden Lotus dailies failed. They failed in making people feel as if they were making some progress at a reasonable rate because 100 just seems, well, unrewarding.

What they could have done, instead of having three sets of hubs they send you too each day, is make it one hub a day for 5 quests and triple the rewards of those 5 so it equals the same thing in the end.

You could even only double it, effectively making the reputation grind longer, but getting 200 per for 5 quests would feel like more progression than 100 per for 15 even if it isn't, just because of how people perceive things. Most people will not ever see the end result that they are getting 1500 per day, they will only remember they are getting 100 per quest. That was one of the Golden Lotus problems.

2) Location, Location, Location.

No, I am not talking about real estate, I actually put location three times because reason number two, location, can fall neatly into three sub categories about why their location is a problem with them.

a) Close to the Main Cities.

Not really a problem, so to speak, but it does seem to become one during prime time. What seems to have become a habit of many people waiting in queue for a dungeon or raid is to do a few dailies to get some valor. Nice work blizzard, no seriously, not being sarcastic. It is a great design, but it also is a fault when one such questing hub, the biggest and most important one as a matter of fact, is right outside where everyone parks themselves when they log out.

The Golden Lotus quest hub is always packed. Over packed in fact. Everyone goes to do them because they need to do them to open others and because they are right outside your front door while you are waiting in queue.

It makes it like there is no option. It is as if they tried to funnel everyone into one zone to quest on purpose. Not like this has not been done before, there were hubs that they funneled everyone into in all previous expansions. Isle, tourney, molten front, but all of those were one time things and there was no additional incentive to keep doing them after you got what you wanted from them unlike the Lotus ones. These they want everyone to keep doing forever and even give you the valor bait to get you there while you are waiting in queue. They pushed us there, not like the tillers which is another huge quest hub most do every day. That one people do because they want to. Not, just because it is there, not, because they need to do it to open others.

b) Dailies Only.

As mentioned above, this has been done before with the isle and the front but neither of those were part of the main world as the Golden Lotus are. Isle was off on its own and the front was phased. They were not part of every day life.

Now personally I have never had a problem with this and quite honestly never even thought about it until I started hearing others mention it and what they had to say made a lot of sense to me, even if I did not really agree.

The area is one useless patch of land if you are not doing dailies. It is an entire zone, dead center of the map, that just wastes space to house our new cities and nothing else of use when not thinking about dailies. Now, once you have finished the quests in each zone you can say the same about any zone, but their argument is that this zone holds no purpose except to waste space.

Point taken. It does seem like a different approach to their design. Most zones have their zone quests and then maybe a daily hub in them once you reach max level. This zone has nothing except for the daily hub once you reach 90. In an expansion that is all about dailies when it comes to where to throw your dislike, the Golden Lotus area wins the ire of people hands down because they take up a whole zone. It is an entire zone dedicated to what people have started to rebel against.

Like I said, I do not mind so much the entire zone is for dailies but I can surely see why this zone, and the daily hub included in it, gets so much hate because of it. It is the perfect example of over doing it when it comes to dailies.

c) Travel.

People can not complain it is far from home, as it is right outside your front door, but people have been complaining about travel when it comes to the Golden Lotus quests oddly enough. Not the travel to it, but the fact that it feels like one quest hub all over the place when it really is three different mini hubs. Remember where I said earlier that how people feel matters even if they are wrong? This is a case of that.

People feel that to do the dailies you need to travel the entire zone. Even the most traveled quest hub this expansion, that is the Celestial quest hubs I am talking about, you have to basically go all over the world to do them, but each time they are just in that tight little defined space. So it feels as if it is a nice tight quest hub even if it did require a lot of travel to get to it, so people do not complain about the travel concerns.

With the Golden Lotus you start one place, move to another place and the move to a third place. It makes people feel as if they are using the entire map all the time and some people seem to dislike that. Excuse me if I really disagree with this point here, flying to my shado-pan dailies or fishing dailies, or any other daily basically takes longer then all the flying I will do while doing three sets of Lotus dailies, but I can understand what they mean even if I do not agree with it and it comes down to feelings again. People are left feeling like it is a lot of travel even if it is not and that leaves a bad taste in their mouths.

3) Quest Design.

This is another point that has multiple angles to come from. One being that some of the quests are just downright annoying or flat out unfun.

a) No Fun.

I'll be the first to say that the sprites are annoying as hell if you are not the type that has figured out how to do them without dragging many into the fight. I'll also be the first to say there is nothing more humorous when talking about sprites then seeing someone run their ass off trying to get away from them with a trail of 10 or 12 sprites following them. It is almost as fun as watching DKs get knocked off the mountain by goats because they dropped from the air with a D&D to try and take a whole pack of goats they could not handle. The sprites are in the same league of the goats. People hate to do them but love to watch others do them.

There are many quests in the Lotus rotation that are just horrible. Sprites can be one of them, another is when you have the serpents in the first set with certain other quests. The serpents are annoying enough as is because it makes you have to constantly move all the time. I have never had any issue with doing them on my tank or hunter but try doing them on characters that need to stand still like a mage or a priest and it becomes annoying as hell. Not hard, just annoying.

Now if the daily is up where you need to kill those spirits that run around in packs of 5 or 6 at a time at the same time as that one, you moving every two seconds to avoid the circle breath thing and those babies respawning on a seemingly instant spawn timer and you could find yourself in a constant epic battle until you are a little over geared and can kill the things really fast. Again, it is not a matter of difficulty, it is not difficult, but it sure as hell is annoying.

I saw someone the other day die doing one of the rings over at the garrison in say cursing at no one really, just out of frustration. I whispered them to offer some advice on how to avoid the things and they said they have been trying for an hour and keep dying. I told them switch to healing spec as they were a priest and try healing themselves while doing it if they are having issues. I finished it, saw them turn into the priest angel form and got a whisper that said, fuck!!! i give up but thanks anyway. Now I've never had any problems with it but it sure as hell seems others have. They were not the first and will not be the last I see having trouble with that one, so I can surely see people not having any fun there.

Another great one is that worg with the sword, I've seen more people die to him than I can even count and each one was funny to watch. Have you ever noticed that the more annoying a quest is to do the funnier it is to watch others do it? The Golden Lotus are filled with annoying quests. Even my favorite, the roll club one, which I wish was a daily every day because I love doing it, I have heard people tell nightmare stories about not being able to do it.

b) Random Hubs.

Random hubs are good, do not get me wrong, it mixes things up so it does not feel like the same old same old every day. But sometimes random sucks. Like the one quest achievement I have left to do, the one where you can take no damage from walking through the halls, I have not gotten that quest since, well, forever.

I got it early on when I was more concerned with getting things done. I figured I would do it later without getting hit. There are two I would need to do anyway so I will come back later at a time when I am not rushing to get everything done I could take my time and get the achievement.

I was wrong. I have never gotten that quest hub again. I've only even done one of the two to begin with. I have 6 characters at least at honored, 2 at exalted, and over all of them that one time is the only time I have ever seen that quest. And I have never seen the other of the two I would need for the achievement.

What is more annoying that not being able to do an achievement? Not even being able to attempt to do it.

I did not get the roll club quest on my main until way after I reached exalted. I was doing the dailies on another character when I noticed it was up so quickly switched to my main and did it on him. How do you manage to get all the way to exalted and never see a quest?

The random hub design of the Golden Lotus is worse than most because there are so many different ones. Some people like certain hubs, some like others. They should have taken a page out of the molten front dailies and give us a choice after the first set. Do you want to go to the halls, the garrison, the lake or the village. How about letting me choose where I want to start even?

I would do the halls every day hoping to get the ones I need instead of having to do three sets of them just to be let down and see that is not on the daily agenda today. Will I ever see that one again? I do not do the Lotus quests every day, but maybe they should be kind enough that if they are going to use this horrible design that they tell us what the quests hubs of the day are before we start. Oh, third hub is halls today, I'll do them. I feel weird asking in guild every day what the third set of Lotus dailies are for today.

Random is nice, sometimes. When it comes to something like this, after I am already exalted, let me just do the ones I want to do. I am not doing them for rep, I will be doing them for that achievement or some quick valor at the beginning of the week. The fact there is this massive wall of dailies you need to do to even see if the one you want to do it up is bad design, in my expert daily doer opinion that is.

c) Gating.

This is the biggest one in the whole book and the number one reason people begin to hate the Golden Lotus dailies. I am not talking the gating to gear, we all knew that would be there, I am talking the gating to do... wait for it... more dailies.

You need to grind the most annoying daily hub in the game to revered just to have the privilege of doing more dailies? Gee, thanks blizzard, said sarcastically this time.

For my alts, specifically tailoring and enchanting alts, I just want to get my recipes. Anything extra is a bonus. If I get rep to buy gear, so be it. If I don't, who cares, I just want my patterns. Not a lot to ask right?

So if I need to get shado-pan reputation or celestial reputation I will do that, no complaints from me. But I have to do the Golden Lotus reputation before I can do the reputation I want? What is that line of complete bullshit that blizzard keeps trying to pass off? Everything is optional. Golden Lotus is not optional if I want to get the enchanting recipes on my enchanter. Yes, it is my option to get it or not to get it. I want to get it and will do the grind for it. I just do not feel I should be required to do a grind to be allowed to do another grind for it.

I've never had a problem with gating. I actually support some sort of gating in many cases. If you want to do something you should have a path to do it and I understand there was a reason for the gating at the beginning.

I will be the first to admit I would have burnt myself out doing the other two hubs as well every day at the beginning. But this is a prime example of holding alts back. If you opened everything on your main then you should be allowed to choose on an alt. If I wanted my enchanter alts to only get the enchants, I should have been able to do just those and not be forced into doing the Golden Lotus like them or not.

Many people have developed their ill feeling toward the Golden Lotus not because of the reasons I previously mentioned but because of this badly designed quest progression that required people to do something that they did not want to do because it was not necessary for what they wanted to achieve.

If your intention was just to get the enchanting patterns you should be able to just work toward getting them. Let the gate of shado-pan or celestial reputation be your gate to getting them and not have a gate before the gate for no other reason then to pretend it is optional content.

This design, the forced into doing it design, is the main reason that the Golden Lotus dailies made people feel like it is the poster boy for what ruined dailies.

Dailies are good for the game but the Golden Lotus ones were not. There were, and will remain, the reason people hate dailies. When someone like me, who has well over 10,000 dailies on a single character to my credit that I did because I wanted to, hates them then you know there is something off with them.

There is nothing wrong with the dailies this expansion. Nothing except for the fact the Golden Lotus made people have ill feelings toward the grind and as I said, how people feel really matters. Even if they are wrong. And the Golden Lotus dailies ruined the daily experience for them.

6 comments:

"It would take a new player with no guild, not a human, and no other reputation bonuses less than a month of grinding them to get to exalted.

Grump - how much time are we talking about per daily quest? Give me your time and then I will mulitply that by 3 to get teh average players time. There seems to be a lot of time to do a few dailies here, and knowing Blizzard, they want one to spend all of ones time doing dailies. heck, lately I have only have 30 to 45 minutes a day to play. Not enough time to the fishing dailies, much less anyone elses (my poor farm- it is barren! on 3 toons : ( ).

I'm only at 4904 dailies on my hunter, so not as seasoned as you, but I'll agree that I've done enough dailies to understand which ones I like and which ones I dislike and why.

1. Agreed. Too many for one set.2. a. Agreed. Too much competition.2. b. Doesn't bother me.2. c. Doesn't bother me.3. a. Agreed. They're not interesting dailies and a couple are really annoying.3. b. Agreed. This is very annoying. I dislike this about AC dailies as well.3. c. Agreed. Too crowded early on and annoying for alts.

My usual priority for dailies:TillersShieldwall (I always skip the Ogudei ruins)AnglersAC if it's the Crane hub since I need the achievKlaxxi (I always skip the one where you ride the big bug)SP if I need that hub for the achievs

If I still feel like doing dailies:SP if I didn't do it alreadyAC if I didn't do it already (I always skip that stupid torch quest at Tiger hub)Cloud serpents (I always skip the hozen cave)

Funny part is, I will do the pogoda part of GL because it is quick, it is there, and even low geared fresh alts can manage it with little trouble most time. After that one starter set, I have no interest in doing them, except if the end one is one of the ones I need for achievements.

I always liked the klaxxi ones. The tillers and angler ones are great and seemingly the main ones I do on alts, sadly, they are ones that do not offer any gear when you get them up.

I love the AC ones at the tiger and the CS ones where you challenge people. They make for quick and easy dailies and that is how I feel dailies should be.